Residential refrigerator and boondocking, Confused!

TinBenders, we are all electric with 8 house batteries and 2 chassis batteries. We have a residential Jenn Air side by side refrigerator/freezer with water and ice in the door. We also have one solar panel on the roof to keep the batteries topped off.

Our manual says run the generator 2 hrs. in the morning and 2 hrs. in the evening. Seems to work perfectly when boondocking as breakfast is in the morning and dinner in the evening when watching TV in both events. We also have a auto genny start if for some reason the batteries fall below a certain point.

Personally, I like an electric coach and don't prefer having propane on board. Our coach uses one fuel, diesel. Our Aqua-hot heating system uses diesel or electric. The generator is diesel.

MM.

Hi,

I don't have a electric frig, but it can be done with solar. You will need a pure sign wave inverter, the factory already installed them in the electric refrigerator models. THey also typically install 6 to 8 batteries, so you have a 600 to 800 amp hour battery that will be 360 to 500 pounds weight.

But you will save weight in the propane tank. Personally I would rather have a pair of propane refrigerators to increase the capacity, and can choose to shut one off if I am not buying and bringing along 3 weeks of food for a crowd.

I would rather not run the generator 4 hours per day, but would run it say 1 hour in the morning, and let the solar top off the batteries. By installing several 100 to 150 watt solar panels, you can collect more electric than the refrigerator uses. But probably not more than the electric stove will use. I am not sure if you can bake things like cornbread in a convection microwave, but it sounds like it would work well. Otherwise I would have a problem giving up my propane oven.

You would need to run the generator anytime you are baking, probably should run it while cooking (except rare occasions, like when heating coffee, or if the battery is full and you are out of the generator run hours that some parks have to keep it quiet).

So I plan on sticking with my gas stove and gas oven.

I might give in on a residential refrigerator, they are becoming much more energy efficient, and solar panels have come way down in price. You can buy solar panels for about $1.25 per rated watt, yet the motorhome manufactures recall the 90's when a 100 watt panel cost $400 and they still try to charge $500 for a small solar panel.

SunELec.com

I would also say that 6 batteries is enough weight. Any more, and you might as well just run the generator more. You will have enough battery capacity to collect 12 hours of solar power. You will have more than 24 hours of run time too.

One RV owner says that he can dry camp longer in his all electric RV tan past RV's. This is because of the 6 batteries and several solar panels. And the heating is Aqua Hot diesel fired furnace. 135,000 Btu's per gallon, not the 95,000 Btu's of propane per gallon or 115,000 of gasoline. That is why a diesel gets slightly higher MPG than a gas engine.

Fred.

One comment about inverters.

MOST residential fridges require Pure Sine Wave (PSW) inverters. Most coaches built in the 2000-2009 time-frame had Modified Sine Wave (MSW) inverters. Most residential fridges and microwaves do not work well on MSW inverters. However, Samsung refrigerators (and certain GE Profile units made by Samsung) use a DC compressor and a power supply to rectify the AC for the compressor. These refrigerators sip power, and work fine on MSW inverters, saving thousands on installation for folks that already have a MSW inverter. They are ideal for RVs, and they are beautiful appliances. The RF197 model Samsung is a great fit for replacing the NOCOLD 1200's.

You really need to check out power consumption of the fridge. They all have a label inside. Then check out the batteries on board. Keep in mind you shouldn't take batteries down below 50%. Do the math yourself and ignore the sales pitch.

With enough battery capacity and solar, it can be done. There's quite a few threads on this.

WyoTraveler wrote:
You really need to check out power consumption of the fridge. They all have a label inside. Then check out the batteries on board. Keep in mind you shouldn't take batteries down below 50%. Do the math yourself and ignore the sales pitch.

and I found on the 197 that label wasn't accurate. The Samsung draws considerably less. There is only one way to meter what any residential fridge is going to draw, and that's by plugging a Kill-O-Watt for 24hours and plotting it.

The other thing that needs attention is living habits. I have way more than enough battery and solar, BUT... Being nocternal pretty much eat up my residential energy budget with evening electronics: TV, DSS, PC (sometimes), and recharging iPads, cellphones, etc. it all matters

The newer big MH's are energy hogs even without a home refer and require a bunch of solar and/or generator run time. We boondock a lot and use a lot of electronic's as we take our office with us and ended up running the generator an hour in the mornings and two in the evenings with a propane refer. This is with 800 amp hours of batteries and 200 watts of solar. Replacing my plasma TV with a LED would probably let me put in a RF197 model Samsung and not increase my generator run time as the plasma was that big an energy HOG.
I would not let the home refer be a deciding factor as they have gotten very energy efficient. From your previous posts I doubt you will be in the MH all that much during the day.

I have 4 8d batteries. I had a propane fridge too but put the samsung RF197 in. I had three batteries before but pulling the propane tank made room for at least 2 though I only put one in. I can go all night and it charges right up with morning coffee. I have two Cpaps that run all night and they take power as does my office equipment. If i boondocked more often I would put solar on. I had that on one coach but decided that running the generator in the shade is easier and the mountains where I live has lots of trees. No issues and even pulled the stove and put in an induction stove.

Boondock often with residential fridge. I have a PSW inverter, 2 120Watt solar panels, MPPT controller, 6 house batteries, all interior/exterior lights (except headlights) are LED, auto gen start, all 3 TV's are LCD's. I run my generator 2hrs in morning and if the sun is out there is usually no need for a generator cycle in the evening. My coach is a 2004 so I changed out the original configuration to what I described.

I removed the Norcold 1200 two years ago and replaced it with a Samsung 197. We have 4 6vdc batts and a MSW inverter. The only thing onboard now that uses propane is the stovetop, we have AquaHot. We have boondocked three times for 5 days each time. We had to run the generator twice a day for about 2 hrs each time to keep everything in running mode. The only problem we had was when we didn't get back to the coach 2 hrs prior to hitting the sack for the nite and shut the generator off after about a hour of running. In the morn I noted that the inverter had faulted and shut down and the house batts were at 10.7vdc. I was still able to start the generator OK. We have a solar panel that keeps the chassis batts up so I wasn't worried about being stuck. If we were to want to do more extensive boondocking I would add a few solar panels and recharge the house batts with them and reduce the running time for the generator.

Ron